In connection with shipping products from a manufacturer to a retail establishment, it is known to package various products in a container, seal the container, and ship the container for delivery to a designated retail establishment. Although various materials could be used in making the containers, the most common material employed is corrugated cardboard or paperboard. In general, the paperboard is provided in the form of a blank which can be conveniently stored in a flat configuration but easily erected through a simple folding operation to establish an open-ended container which can be filled and sealed, typically in an automated process. These containers are not only lightweight and quite strong, but the paperboard is advantageously recyclable.
In some situations, the containers are shipped directly from the manufacturer to various retail establishments while, in other cases, the manufactured products are first shipped in the containers to a designated distributorship which then redirects the containers to the appropriate store. In either situation, it was not uncommon to display the products at the store in containers of this type. That is, many stores wish to minimize the time and cost associated with removing the individual products from the containers and placing the products directly on display shelves. Instead, the container is simply placed in an accessible location for consumers with the products being exposed to enable the consumers to select a desired product directly from the container. To expose the products, the paperboard containers are generally cut to remove a substantial portion of the container body, thereby exposing the product and enhancing the overall visual effect for the purchaser.
In the past, it was not uncommon for a store employee to be provided with a box cutter for the purpose of converting a shipping container to a display container. However, when cutting open the container, care must be taken to avoid also cutting into the packaged product. In any case, for various reasons, the industry has moved away from providing this type of instrument to employees. As simply tearing the boxes open leads to an unsightly result, it has been proposed to incorporate score lines directly into the containers. Typically, the score lines are created by forming side walls of a container with a series of aligned perforations such that, when portions of the sides are manually pulled apart, the container will tend to tear along the perforations, thereby establishing a more aesthetic result. Unfortunately, this type of arrangement still has a propensity for unintended tears and the score lines tend to undesirably weaken the overall structural integrity of the container. The structural integrity can prove quite important, particular depending on the type of packaged products and the manner in which the containers are moved. For instance, if the products are liquids packaged in glass containers, the overall container can be rather heavy and, if the containers are loaded/unloaded utilizing clamp or similar-type work trucks, the containers can easily fail.
In light of these and other drawbacks, it is actually now quite common for packaged products to be shipped to a distributor, which is relatively close to the final product destination, in a shipping container. At the distributor, the shipping container is opened, either manually or through an automated process, and the contents of the container are transferred to another container which can also double as a display designed for placement either on the floor or a shelf of a store. For example, this type of delivery process is widely used in the food industry. For instance, it is known to pack and seal various cartons or boxes of cereal in a paperboard container, ship the container to a distributor, cut the container along four sides to expose the cartons of cereal in an automated operation, manually separate the container portions, transfer the cartons of cereal to a display container and then deliver the cartons of cereal in the display container to a designated grocery store. Even though both the shipping and display containers can be recycled and the result is quite convenient for the store owners, the overall process is quite labor intensive and costly. In addition to these drawbacks, it has been found that the automated cutting operation cannot be reliably practiced with certain products. More specifically, cartons of cereal, particularly those located at the corners of the shipping containers, are sometimes sliced during the cutting operation, resulting in product which can no longer be sold. Certainly, material and labor savings can be realized by reducing the need for separate shipping and display containers. However, to benefit from this savings, a reliable system must be in place to assure that shipping containers can be reliably converted to aesthetically pleasing display containers or cases, particularly without damaging the packaged products.